My Thoughts on Bruce Springsteen and His Career as an Indie Rock Musician
softer than the rest
He said it had been a year, so he thought he’d reach out to let me know how happy he’s been and that he got a dog. He said he knew how excited I would be that he got a dog (he was right). He told me he had dated some people in the last year, but nothing had worked out. I lied through my teeth, “same.” I didn’t want to tell him that I hadn’t made it past the third date with anyone in the last ten months. I didn’t want to tell him that since we stopped seeing each other, I began to question whether or not romantic love was actually meant for me. Extremely dramatic of me, I know, but true.
My mouth filled up with too many words and too much anxiety. I mumbled something about thinking I’d never hear from him and that seeing his name pop up on my phone feels like what I’d imagine it feels like when he sees his ex’s name pops up on his phone.
He said, “I get that.”
It’s nice to hear from someone you care so much about. But when all the things you’ve been working on healing or compartmentalizing suddenly come tumbling down on you, you remember why you haven’t reached out yourself. He said he’d like to talk every so often to me if I was open to it. I really wish I was open to it.
I wanted to tell him that what happened between us felt big to me and this call made me feel like it was so small. I told him I was hurt and sad by what happened ten months ago, and still sort of am. He said sometimes it’s okay to talk, even if it’s hard. I told him I’d have to think about that.
After the phone call, I called my best friend as I paced through Trade Joe’s trying to pick a frozen meal for dinner. She let me cry and then she made me laugh. Her ability to give me space to both laugh and cry within thirty seconds of each other is why she’s been my best friend for fifteen years. My description of the phone call made her angry, why would he reach out just to tell you he got a dog? Did he need some kind of ego boost?
As my friend expressed her anger and frustration over the situation while I dissociated in the grocery store, I couldn't help but wonder… where exactly was all my anger? And why have none of the Trader Joe’s cashiers flirted with me yet?
I have a hard time feeling anger in general (I think many women do). When someone does something that hurts me, before my brain even considers expressing irritation, my body just starts crying. Quite literally, if someone flips me off on the freeway, I start crying and then I show up to work drinks with puffy, wet eyes. When my work acquaintance asks “what’s wrong?” I have to make up some elaborate lie about a podcast I was listening to (I don’t listen to podcasts unless it’s Otherworld) and how the storyline really got me, because how am I supposed to convince someone to take me seriously professionally if they find out I cry when a stranger flips me off for being a Bad Driver.
After the phone call, my throat felt like it was filled with hot concrete for a day, I cried for two, and now I think I have more closure than I realized I needed from the situation.
The call felt like someone knocked on a closed door and when I cracked it open, it was yanked from me and slammed back in my face. Painful, yes, but a door being slammed in your face makes it easier to walk away (because there’s quite literally nowhere else to go).
This past fall I drove up to a chilly beach town in Northern California. I took myself to a bar and after some locals cleared out, it was just me and the bartender for half an hour. We made small talk until the door swung open. A black dog came running in and his owner strolled in after him. I don’t remember his name, but he was a local with curly blonde hair, a nice smile and his dog’s name was Whiskey. He sat next to me and ordered us shots of whiskey. He was a carpenter in town. Moments later, another guy walked in who was road tripping from Colorado. More shots of whiskey were ordered.
The guy from Colorado was taking a breakup road trip down the California coast. His fiancé had just left him to pursue a relationship with another woman. He said he was five days into the road trip and felt that all his breakup pain had gone away. I asked him, where do you think it went? He shrugged, I just know that it’s gone.
It took quite literally everything in me to stop myself from telling him that I thought most men don’t feel the pain of a breakup until about a year later because they push it out of sight, out of mind. I was so, so brave and resisted my inclination to tell him that I didn’t actually think his pain was gone, but maybe he tucked it away somewhere, and that it would come out when he tried opening his heart for another girl and she’d have to pick up the pieces when that pain came pouring out finally. He’d break up with her and then call her one year later to tell her he got a dog.
I was the most heroic girl and I kept my mouth shut. I turned to the carpenter and asked him what he was doing in town.
He followed a girl here a few years ago but they’d broken up because she cheated on him. He loved this remote coastal town but knew he wouldn’t find a wife here. He wanted to find someone elsewhere and bring her back to this town and start a quiet life.
The Colorado man closed out and the carpenter asked me to stay. I stayed for another drink and he asked me to come home with him. In my most Serena van der Woodsen voice, I told him I have to go.
I knew I wasn’t really in the mental state to have casual, drunk sex with someone and then leave town the next day. When I was in San Francisco the next night, I had dinner with my older sister and told her this story. She said something like, now wait just a minute… casual sex with a handsome carpenter? Now hold on just one SECOND… that has the stinky stench of Brittney Badduke all over it. What changed?
I thought back to a trip I took about a year prior. I was on Vancouver Island staying at an Airbnb with my mom, my other sister, and my mom’s friends.
One night I found myself sitting in the hot tub outside alone and I could see the Airbnb property manager from the hot tub. He was putting a frozen meal in the oven. We caught eyes, he smiled. I returned to my book (phone). I looked up again, we caught eyes and he waved. Goo goo gah gah.
I closed my book (put my phone down) and channeled every ounce of Samantha Jones I had in me. I got out of the hot tub in my bikini –body literally *steaming* from being so hot in the snowy cold– and knocked on his door. He opened the door and before I could even finish “do you want to take a walk—” he said “yes.”
I put on some layers (sad for everyone involved) and we took a walk on the beach. We snuck into a fancy resort and sat by their fire pits, sipping beers. We watched the ocean and he asked if he could take me somewhere with a nicer view. Hubba. We got in his pickup truck and drove to a remote part of the island. HUBBA!
My sister texted me as she watched my location drift around: are you sure this is safe? I was reminded that when you are in a relationship for all of your twenties you don’t know that sometimes you go to random places with men you don’t know very well and that this is called dating.
While he drove his pickup truck, I sat in the passenger seat and played “I’m On Fire” by Bruce Springsteen. I asked him if he’d ever heard the song before. He was forty-five and literally laughed in my face. This is actually the coolest thing I think I’ve ever done.
We took a hike and it was pitch black. I got scared but he was tough and held my hand. When we got to the lookout point, we watched the stars and kissed. We went back to his place. Later I went back to my Airbnb and fell asleep. I went surfing the next morning and when I got back, he had texted me asking to take me to lunch.
When I’m in LA, I rarely have texts from guys waiting on my phone when I get back from surfing. When I’m in LA, I go on dates and when the guy asks “so what are you looking for?” and when I reply with “I’d like to meet someone who makes me feel seen and who lets me see them” he says “I think we’re looking for different things”.
So, back to my perfect sister’s question, why not? Why not have casual sex with the coastal carpenter with curly blonde hair?
I guess it’s because I’m at a place in my life where I am craving more than validation. Ya, it feels great to be held and touched and smooched. But I think it would feel great to take a walk with someone and hear their thoughts and tell them about mine.
Interesting how when you start craving to be loved more than to be fucked, a lot less people want to go on dates with you…
Recently, I was hiking with a friend and I told her that I thought I might be becoming avoidant. I told her that while I was craving love, I was becoming less and less interested in being in a relationship. She very astutely pointed out that she thought I was becoming less interested in the relationship because I was maybe becoming more focused on the person of it all. Not avoidant, rather… focused.
Perhaps it is all becoming less about the concept of being with someone and more about a specific someone. Someone specific who when I ask them if they’ve ever heard Bruce Springsteen’s second biggest hit, they say “no, never” and let me show it to them over and over and over again.
"I was reminded that when you are in a relationship for all of your twenties you don’t know that sometimes you go to random places with men you don’t know very well and that this is called dating."
SCREAMING